David Burke

PhD: heavy metal studies |
Band: Absent Signifier S(Ⱥ) | ∞ | a.p.-1 |
negative universality | politics of enjoyment | aesthetics of the bad

Bsky: metalanalysis

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

My band now has a logo which incorporates Lacanese to reach new heights of wanky esotericism

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Metal musicians and social media don't mix, part 94

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Hegel - the truth is in the whole (totality)
Lacan - our truth is our hole (constitutive lack)
Baudrillard - the truth is in the hole (pataphysics)
Bataille - our truth is our hole (scatology)

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

@Lowenaffchen I'd really like to speak to you about cultural theory sometime, I find your work with FYM to be really useful and interesting. Could you send me a DM? Many thanks :)

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

/ and kept on numbing

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Seeing bands I love doesn't change me enough / rolls over me like a new rug / neither side wholly recognised

the impasse takes action's place / I try to read the singer's face / inscrutable, nothin belied

But I know what you did / and what I've got coming / the band played on

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

What's Left of Metal authors confirmed, including:

@BenBurgis Melissa Vincent @danielukes @TIRShowOakland's Jason Myles @tcoleswords

And more - 13 papers in total (had to be).

Thank you everyone who submitted. We're aiming for a late '25/early '26 publication.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Merch beyond merch, locked comments.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Band's done our first release, a live album called Four Discourses.

UNIVERSITY // ANALYST // HYSTERIC // CAPITALIST

https://t.co/PkP1CQbARm

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

It is not quality that we enjoy in culture, but effort.

Low, high and middle culture all share this.

Unculture (e.g. AI slop) takes no necessary effort, so much of it is not enjoyable.

Sweat is how we see effort.

Metal musicians sweat a lot.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

as if we don't enjoy picking sweetcorn out of faeces.

Twitter is a great site of Bad culture, and sifting through boring Bad or miserable Bad to find the mania-inducing Bad gems is its consumptive practice.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

@SanktMaxTCI Ofc! This is fairly obvious given the historical longevity of neoliberalism - it took a while to gut the welfare state, but now it's bleeding out.

[Liger @EdbieLigerSmith]

Watching Adam Friedland react to Destiny’s existence is funny to me.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

@JoaquinFChavez 1. in the sense of a split between the transgressive contents of metal and the normal lives of its participants (Kahn-Harris 2007)
2. in the sense that metal fans pretend their normal lives are more metal than they are
3. the Hegelian sense; a thing is never 'just' itself.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Metal isn't as metal as it pretends to be.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Had a first look over the abstracts for What's Left of Metal?

Plenty to be excited about - a host of different theoretical schools, a couple of useful practical pieces, and lots of dark thoughts.

Really grateful to everyone who submitted!

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

It remains fascinating to me that metal's overall themes and content are so easily identifiable with what is repressed, not merely in a social/political/cultural sense (taboo) but also regarding the unconscious as described by influential analysts: Freud, Jung, Lacan etc.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Metal is being normalised by Capital, turned into a sea of merchandise, AI slop and so on.

It is also being normalised by the state - see the Gojira Olympics, plus many other cases.

This process can't be reversed (reactionary) nor can we make a bargain with Capital (liberal)...

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

These entail embracing metal's messages sincerely, neither through macho posturing nor through irony.

But metal in capitalism is suffused with both affects, which serve to repress the culture's primary, terrifying content of death, struggle, internal conflict and the Real.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

@LetovCCRU @noetic_emetic it runs out

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

I insist it's insufficient for artists to ask to be left alone to their practices - this is a liberal approach.

Art must qua Situationism, Fluxus etc. fully enter the public (political) realm.

Take Nathan Explosion seriously: We will make everything metal. Blacker than black...

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

Culture has a Real kernel of Event (rupture). (Cf. Attali)

It is mediated by agency and productive forces.

Unculture occurs in the breakdown of this mediation e.g. Fyre Festival, the productive forces absconded the Event, leaving it as a rupture/failure of culture.

[David Burke @metal_analysis]

@nPharaoh_ @BiggSluggathor WE WOULDN'T CARE IF YOU'RE PURPLE 💜💜💜